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Coca-Cola Bets the Future on Content

That’s right. One of the biggest brands in history is changing the way they market their products and various brands to consumers.

The strategy is dubbed Content 2020 and the idea is to improve customer relationships by telling stories. The storytelling focus of the content will drive the strategy in the coming years with the goal of optimizing Coca-Cola’s customer relationships.

This content strategy is long-term focused and seems to position Coke in a good place for the future.

Inbound Marketing has been gaining acceptance from many brands and now Coke is perhaps the biggest to throw away their former business model to focus on content.

The Coca-Cola Content Strategy

Jonathan Mildenhallsays: “All advertisers need a lot more content so that they can keep the engagement with consumers fresh and relevant, because of the 24/7 connectivity. If you’re going to be successful around the world, you have to have fat and fertile ideas at the core.”

This strategy is not revolutionary, but the way consumers can respond to brands’ actions is at a level that probably has never before been seen. Coca-Cola is looking to use stories of consumers and from other sources to drive interaction, sharing and purchasing. This strategy will require feedback from customers and will probably have some added by the creative staff at Coke as well.

One of the first examples of the new strategy will be at this year’s Olympics where Coke will use content on the Web to drive much of their branding efforts. TV and outdoor advertising will be cut back some.

As you look for the campaigns you can expect to see online video, images and text. The text might be in the form of some blogging efforts or similar text content on various websites for Coke’s brands.

Video will continue to gain importance on the Web. Coke has long worked with some of the best advertisers in the world to generate interest through TV and online video advertisements.

The new focus will continue to utilize expertise in video, but with a focus on storytelling and engagement. The brand engagement is what Coke is hoping will lead to profits down the line. The expectation is to double the size of the Coke business within ten years. That is surely an ambitious goal, but seems possible. It will be interesting to see how this new strategy works.

On the surface, the strategy makes sense. Coke is moving from a push marketing strategy that has provided profits in the past to an entirely new model of conversation and inbound marketing. The “Content Excellence” Coke is striving for should benefit their brand and bottom line in the future.

This news is exciting for the online world and should be for consumers as well. There will be brand stories and the content should be more approachable than the simple interruption caused by past commercials.

This news should also excited any business that is engaging in content development.

It’s good to know the large brands are following your same strategy.

Here are two videos further describing Coca-Cola’s Content 2020 approach.